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Perspective and commentary by Marshall Breeding

¿Por qué Marshall Breeding es bibliotecario?

I was in Santiago Chile to speak at Innovatics2011, one of the more interesting and engaging conference in which I’ve had a chance to participate. Upon arriving in Santiago, three of us took the opportunity to tour around the city center to see some of the architecture, parks, and scenery. The view of the city from the top of one of the hills in a park was particularly spectacular. It was great to get to know two new colleagues also there to speak at the conference, Nieves Gonzalez, an expert in social marketing in libraries from Seville and Javier Leiva Aquilera head of a company called Catorze Asesoria Internet.
We had lunch in one of the main plazas, during which Nieves recorded a quick video interview. Nieves posed the same question to me as she does to others in her collection of interviews: “how did you become a librarian?”

It's time to collect data for the 2011 edition of the survey. This is an opportunity for libraries to register their perceptions of the ILS product they use, its vendor, and the quality of support delivered. Is support getting better or worse? The survey also probes at considerations for migrating to new systems and the level of interest in open source ILS. While the numeric rating scales support the statistical results of the study, it’s the comments offered that provide the most insight into the current state of library automation satisfaction.

Please help your fellow libraries who might be in the process of evaluating library automation options by responding to the survey. Any information regarding vendor performance and product quality can be helpful when making strategic decisions regarding automation alternatives. A large number of responses strengthen the impact of the survey and the subsequent report.

Note: If you have responded to previous editions of the survey, please give your responses again this year. It’s helpful to understand whether things are getting better or worse.

As with the previous versions of the survey, only one response per library is allowed. While all the individuals that work in a library may have their own opinions, please respond to the extent that you can from the general experiences of your library.

How to participate

The survey links each response to the listing for a library in the lib-web-cats directory. This connection provides the ability to correlate responses with the extensive library demographic data in lib-web-cats.

Find your library in lib-web-cats:

Find your library:

(hint: for public libraries, enter city or county)

Select and view the listing for your library

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Complete the form and write in your comments!

When viewing the entry for your library in lib-web-cats, please check for any incomplete or inaccurate information and let me know of any needed changes.